Nameless Impiety
by My last Username
Summary: They weren't very fond of me; I knew that from the start. It wasn't necessarily loathing that they had for me though—I'm almost sure of that. I think the better term would be disgust or perhaps even confusion. In fact, now that I take a moment to think about it, CONFUSION would be the proper noun to describe the feeling I got from them whenever they'd pass me-or I'd pass them.


Chapter One

How Wrong I Was

They weren't very fond of me; I knew this from the start. It wasn't necessarily _loathing_ that they had for me though. No not loathing. I think the better term would be _disgust_ or _confusion. _In fact, now that I take a moment to think about it, _CONFUSION _would be the proper noun to describe the feeling I got from them whenever they'd pass me-or I'd pass them. They wouldn't openly express it though-God forbid they would-but, I could still feel their CONFUSION NONETHELESS. It was those glances your best friend gave you when he tries his best not to stare at the peculiar zit just beneath your lower lip. It was the glance you gave when you knew something (or someone) did not belong.

They liked my older brother though-I knew that from the start too. He was the perfect child, as my mother would say and the future reverend for our village, as others residents would say. (When the current Reverend-Reverend Gibson-wasn't within earshot) It was customary to attend church every Sunday, but my brother would visit on Wednesdays as well because he loved watching Reverend Gibson organize the Sunday sermon and he offered helpful critique when Gibson requested it.

"Do you like the idea of this verse?" Gibson would ask.

"It isn't bad reverend." My brother would respond. "But I believe that this verse-the one where God is speaking with Noah-would make your point much clearer," And so the two would discuss until the Sun had dipped beneath the hills and the moon had taken its place as the pith of night. My brother had a good life.

Now although some villagers may think otherwise I was never jealous of my brother-never found a reason to be really. The whole methodical pseudo religious life just wasn't for me. I was much more content flipping the pages of my Stephen King or Dean Koontz.

So, while my brother fasted and broke bread with the villagers, I curled up in my small one-sheet bed with a good book in one hand and a bag of _Sour Twizzlers_ in the other. My brother hated candy. He said that the sugar made his gums ache. Still, it may be a result of that "Maturity" (because according to my mom, candy was for children) that everyone liked my brother and my brother liked everyone else. It could be-I'm almost 100% certain-that love was the main reason why everyone cried at my brother's funeral.

He died of a natural illness (pneumonia I think it was, but the doctor said the word much too quickly for me to understand). My brother was prescribed medication, but being the religious nut he was and the religious nut his social circle proved to be, my brother refused to take them.

"God will heal me!" He said to me while lying in his bed. He smiled as he said it too and for a moment I downright believed him. Heck, he said it so politic, how could I _not_ believe him? However, the days dragged on and my brother wasn't getting any better. His skin became a sickly pallid color and he was much too weak to even attend church services. I can tell you that he tried his best to get there too; I even carried him on several occasions.

"Maybe God's on hold and can't hear your prayers," We were in his room then. Mother had gone to _Ol'Connor's Grocery Store_ just across from our home and she said she'd be back in an hour or three. "Try leaving a message."

It looked like he was groping for the proper words to respond to my witty remark—knowing my brother, he'd respond with something out of the Psalms—and I waited. All he did though was furrow his brows. His eyes reminded me of…

Then, those two emerald pupils glazed over and he couldn't hear me anymore.

It was only later on that I would realize that my brother's eyes were an uncanny mimicry of the confused stares the other villages gave me. You're a zit that needs to go, those eyes said. Someone get me the _Clearasil. _

#

So here I am several days after his death, standing next to my mother and surrounded by weeping theists. Now like I said earlier, I was never jealous of my brother. We had a great relationship actually-he would ignore my fervent love of fantasy stories and I would ignore his. We were the best of pals that way.

So, it came as CONFUSING (there's that noun again) to me when I didn't join the others in their mourning. I tried to cry—gave it the ol' college try-but, my eyes were dry as a bone. I didn't feel empty though. Sure I didn't feel the same sadness as everyone else felt, but I was filled with…with…

ANGER!

Sure. And Anger was a filling breakfast to have that could last long past dinner.

_It could have all been prevented,_ I thought to myself. _If he had just taken those damn pills!_

It started to rain I think on that day too. It was as if God—There was one, wasn't there?-had decided to add in pathetic fallacy to the funeral as if to say,"I'm just going to make this day even sadder than it already is because I can. And all of you are going to think I'm testing you! Hah! It'll be fun!"

It's interesting how life works. One day you're at the top of the food chain and the next day you're lying in a casket while an old fat guy riding a cloud is making fun of your loved ones.

"And so in the end we send our final goodbyes to a great boy and an even greater friend," Gibson said in the best TD Jakes voice he could muster under the circumstances and although it was just fine, it didn't have that sonorous timbre that Gibson was famous for. Probably because he was speaking through tears. "May we remember the good moments we had with him and may we take this as a test of faith from the Lord."

Everyone nodded their heads. I left early.

#

The rain had become a violent storm by the time I got home and by the time my mother returned, the storm had increased to a tempest. Everyone was advised to stay indoors and why would we go against that?

My mother didn't say much to me when she got home:

"You can make your own dinner, can't you?"

"Yes mother."

She gave a forced smile then, moved like the Tortoise in that Aesop fable she always told me before bed. Slow and steady won the race.

She'd most likely lock herself in her room and play the radio at a low hum. "Everyday" by Darwin Hobbs was her favorite tape during disheartened times such as these.

I walked towards our small kitchen which was well-placed at the anterior of our home with the dining room in an adjacent area. I was only nine mind you so; the science behind rendering food into existence through the use of pyro-mechanics was befuddling to me. I decided to make a ham and cheese sandwich instead.

Pre-sliced bread, cold ham and _Farmer's _Cheddar cheese assembled into one sandwich, I took my food upstairs.

My mother's sobs were heard clearly from her room and "Everyday" was playing as I knew it would.

The door to my brother's room-which was next to mine-opened with ease. If you could ask me why I decided to enter my brother's room I wouldn't be able to respond with an appropriate answer. But wasn't there a saying about curiosity killing cats? Humans then, I believed, were immune.

How wrong I was.

A part of me wondered if eating in the room of your deceased family member could be perceived as immoral—maybe even sacrilegious. I realized I didn't care.

Everything had remained the same before my brother's death and I thought: of course. The bed still held that choking _Playboy_ cologne he loved to wear and his walls still had that terrible red color I disliked. (My brother knew I was more of a _turquoise _kind of guy) What really caught my interest though was the picture hung on the wall just next to the window.

Sitting on the bed, I admired the photo of my brother and I, standing side by side with our mother hugging the both of us from behind. My brother told me that our father had left us before I was born, but there was no dejection in his voice when he said this so, I'm guessing our father wasn't any Saint Augustine.

I took a bite from my sandwich.

The storm wailed and I heard every note. The night, to me at least, was darker than usual. Normally I could see the small family houses across the street from my brother's room, but they were all cloaked in a black veil too thick for human sight to penetrate.

I took another bite from my sandwich. Then, I took two more.

A knock came from the door and light scarred the sky along with a cannon shot somewhere in the distance. My scream could have only lasted for a good three seconds, but it felt like an eternity. Finally, when my voice subsided, I heard,

"What happened? Are you alright?" from my mother.

"I'm fine mom!" I yelled back, finding my voice.

"What's going on in there? Open this door right now!"

I was surprised to find myself in fetal position. The bed sheets had fallen on top of me as well, making a rather misshapen and obviously useless fort. I almost chuckled at my earlier paroxysmal. Almost.

"Honey?"

"Coming mom," I answered, taking long strides to the door handle. However, as I drew near, I heard something, drowned out by the storm and certainly faint, but it was there nonetheless. Darwin Hobbs's "Everyday".

"Mother…you left your radio on,"

"I came here in a rush; do you think I had time to turn it off?" She questioned. "Now open this door!"

The doorframe shook, but I didn't move.

"The thing is though. If you're music is still on then, you were still in your thoughts, weren't you?"

A pause came from the other side. My mother didn't seem to have anything to say.

"I know you." And I did. "When you're in your thoughts, you ignore everything else. Why'd you come here?"

Something began formulating in my mind. I couldn't tell what it was at first, but as I spoke, everything—as silly as it sounded—was sane to me. I wasn't losing my mind.

"Brother…is that-"

A hand burst through the doorframe and clutched tightly around my gullet. I tried to scream, but his grip forbade me.

"Mother was always one to ignore us when she was engrossed in her music. I should have smashed the radio." Brother said, his voice returning to a pitch I knew to be his own. He threw me with unknown strength and I was clouted against the wall. The door was ripped away and thrown aside, as if it didn't have metal hinges that would prevent a human from tossing it in such a way.

Before I could rear my consciousness, he grabbed me again and I found myself pinned against the wall.

His skin had adopted that pallid color I saw him with on his death bed and his hair seemed to still have clumps of dirt intertwined between the filaments. It was the eyes though. Those scrutinizing yet CONFUSED eyes that bore into my skull. I would never forget those.

"God's given me a second chance brother!" my elder sibling said. "Isn't it wonderful? I've been gifted with another life to carry out my Lord's orders!"

"What did you do with mom?" I did my best to block out the strong smell protruding from his mouth. I hadn't tasted it before, but I knew the redolence; it was wine.

"Don't worry I didn't kill her," He said this as though placating a child. "God has taken mercy on her body. She might have tried to stop me if she saw me trying to kill you though so, she's sleeping right now. She'll wake tomorrow."

"You're my brother! What the hell! Who cares what some God tell you to do!?" I screamed, tears tracing in a hurried fashion down my cheeks.

Then, something was lodged into my stomach and I choked on my final words.

I could taste blood-my blood-forming in my mouth and it dripped over my lips. My vision shook and it took all I had just to see my brother's arm wrist-deep into my stomach.

"I won't hear any more of your impiety. You can beg for forgiveness before Him."

With an abandoned flourish, he released me and my body fell to the floor in a dramatic fashion. Then, before my vision faded to black, I saw-for the first time—his shadow doing the hokey-pokey behind him. Finally, silence impregnated the room.

#

When I awoke, there were three things I recalled: the hole which should be in my stomach and the euphoria of it not being there. It had all been a _(__NIGHTMARE)_ dream.

The third thing I noticed—this is the most important and so I saved it for last, was the tall, thick man standing before my bed. He was wearing a white dress shirt with the words "AVIATION" on his right breast pocket. Although his hair was graying at the ends, he emulated youth.

"My name," he said. "is Zeus."

And I believed him.

**HEY GUYS THIS IS THE FIRST CHAPTER. I WILL UPDATE AS OFTEN AS I CAN, BUT DON'T EXPECT THIS STORY TO BE UPDATED EVERY DAY AS I HAVE SCHOOL AND AM EXTREMELY BUSY. IF YOU LIKED THE STORY THEN PLEASE REVIEW IT. IF YOU DIDN'T LIKE THE STORY THEN PLEASE REVIEW IT. ALL I WANT TO DO IS IMPROVE MY WRITING AND THAT CAN ONLY HAPPEN WITH YOUR HELP. **

**CHEERS!**


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